This week’s email from Heal’s presents the recipient with a starkly simple message – an uncomplicated reminder that the sale is nearing its end. The design resembles a typical shop window panel, with oversized upper case text shouting out an urgent alert to the reader. How well does this work as a way to motivate consumers to click? Absent from the email are the usual images of tempting example products. Some lines are named (“20% off the Mistral Sofa”) yet without illustrations they are rather meaningless to a reader who is unfamiliar with the product. Overall, the email seems to lack incentives to click. It appears to be attempting to alarm consumers rather than coax them.

There is a further reason for avoiding the use of this email style, and one which is more fundamental to the art of emailing. The creative consists of just one image, and the fonts used are large and bold. These features will be disliked by most spam filters, thus reducing the chances of the email reaching the inbox. If it does arrive safely, some recipients will be unable to see it. This is because there is no link to view an online version of the email, rendering it invisible to users whose browsers don’t display images.

The email does get some things right. The design resembles the Heal’s website, giving a feel of consistency. It has alt tags, and there is a simple unsubscribe option. Yet overall it is uninviting, impersonal, and lacks any real sense of the values of the Heal’s brand.

5/10

Information and images supplied by IPT, sourced from their email competitor intelligence programme - EmailTracker (www.email-tracker.co.uk)